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Article history: Based on data from 412 households, this study used the sustainable livelihoods approach to analyse
Received 29 November 2014 changes in livelihood strategies and the relationship between those changes and rural household atti-
Received in revised form tudes in an eastern coastal region of China. Focussing on household off-farm employment decisions and
16 October 2015
land transfer decisions, we classified the households into six types based on their livelihood strategies,
Accepted 12 December 2015
namely, off-farm employment-oriented, balanced, off-farm, idle, professional, and conventional. The
Available online xxx
survey results indicate that two capital factors, age and education, and two mediating factors, wage and
crop prices, are important influences of off-farm employment decisions, whereas factors such as policies
Keywords:
Livelihood strategy
and subsidies, machinery, activities organized by local agricultural cooperatives, and land rent sub-
Livelihood transition stantially influence land transfer decisions. By analysing the characteristics, trends and driving factors of
Rural household livelihood transitions, i.e., changes in rural household livelihood strategies, from 1993 to 2013, we
China explored the mechanisms of livelihood transitions. The results indicate that the proportion of conven-
tional households decreased and the proportion of off-farm employment-oriented households and off-
farm households increased. Agricultural production transformed from a system of scattered house-
holds (conventional and off-farm employment-oriented households) into broad-scale management
households (professional and balanced households). These changes were the main characteristics of
livelihood transitions under rapid industrialization combined with rapid urbanization in the Qingpu
district. Rural livelihood transitions exhibited a stepped pattern, going through an initial stage, a self-
organizing stage, and a government-led stage.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2015.12.008
0743-0167/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
146 Z. Liu, L. Liu / Journal of Rural Studies 43 (2016) 145e158
livelihoods are usually dynamic (Ellis, 2000; Scoones, 2009), and as emerge. Section 2 of this paper describes the study area and
such, they involve transitions between different strategies context, while Section 3 describes the concepts and methodology of
(Mushongah and Scoones, 2012). Therefore, many variables the study. Section 4 then describes the results of the rural livelihood
involved in the process of rural livelihood transitions must be transition survey, presents statistical relationships between farmer
researched, including on- and off-farm employment, income attitudes and behaviours, and investigates evolutionary character-
sources, resources bases, financial capacity and social relationships istics, trends and driving factors of rural livelihood transitions.
of the households (Conway and Chambers, 1992; Scoones, 1998). To Sections 5 and 6 discuss and conclude the main findings and
close this gap, Ulrich et al. (2012) presented a bi-temporal inter- indicate the potential for further application of the results.
and intra-household comparison, which covered 13 years, on the
portfolio composition of assets in Kenya. Mushongah and Scoones 2. Study area and context
(2012) used a combination of a bi-temporal household surveys,
in-depth biographical interviews, and wealth rankings to examine 2.1. Study area
livelihood changes in southern Zimbabwe over a 20-year period.
Radel et al. (2010) comparatively assessed the agricultural liveli- The case study area is situated in Qingpu district, which is
hood transition and the accompanying land changes in Mexico's located in western Shanghai. Shanghai (31.1 N, 121.4 E), situated on
southern Yucatan region. These studies employed a comparative bi- an alluvial plain at the mouth of the Changjiang River (Fig. 1), is the
or multi-temporal perspective to assess changes in livelihood as- largest city and the most economically prosperous region of China.
sets or strategies of rural households. However, these comparative As the economic, financial, trade and shipping centre on China's
survey-based analyses provide limited insights into the continu- east coast, Shanghai occupies an area of approximately 6400 km2
ously changing processes of livelihood transition. As livelihood and has a population of over 24 million (NBSC, 2012). In 2012, the
transition is a continuous process, livelihood system changes are land area of Shanghai comprised 0.06% of China and the population
best investigated and analysed from a dynamic process perspective. was less than 1.8%, but its gross domestic product (GDP) accounted
However, the lack of long-term data at such detailed levels impedes for 3.8% of China's overall GDP (NBSC, 2012). Shanghai has expe-
the understanding of livelihood dynamics. rienced rapid economic development since the beginning of the
In light of recent calls for greater efforts to understand liveli- 1990s. From 1990 to 2012, its resident population grew from 13.34
hood dynamics (Addison et al., 2009; Scoones, 2009), this paper million to 23.80 million, the GDP increased from 781.66 billion
contributes to the current livelihood literature with a continuous RMB¥ to 20,181.72 billion RMB¥, and the shares of primary industry,
process analysis of the rural livelihood transition over 20 years. In secondary industry and tertiary industry in the GDP changed from
this paper, a survey-based exploration of rural livelihood transition, 4.4%, 64.7%, and 30.9%e0.6%, 37.2%, and 62.2%, respectively (SSB,
a case study in the east coastal region of China, is presented. 2010). Rapid urbanization and industrialization have had pro-
Because statistical data at the household level were not available, found influences on the development of the suburban rural areas.
this study aims to explore livelihood changes using a household Although agriculture in Shanghai has an extremely low production
survey. We focus on the typical livelihood assets (labour and land) value share, its grain output per unit, per capita net income of
and the accompanying typical livelihood strategies (off-farm farmers and commodity rate of agricultural product all rank near
employment and land transfers), which are identified by the the top in China. Its typical role in rural development has some
important role they play in China's rural livelihoods. By investi- reference value for the agricultural development of many regions in
gating and backtracking the current and former decisions that the context of rapid urbanization and industrialization.
households made regarding labour and land, we develop a typology Qingpu has a resident population of 1.16 million, of which 29.2%
of livelihood strategies to define each of the household's current is registered in the rural area (SSB, 2010). In 2012, the shares of
and former livelihood types, by which the footprint of each primary industry, secondary industry and tertiary industry in the
household's livelihood strategy and the continuously changing GDP were 1.4%, 57.5%, and 41.1%, respectively (SSB, 2010). In the
processes of livelihood transition can be restored. Accordingly, this agricultural sector, plantation and aquaculture activities contribute
paper contributes to the literature on the impact of personal per- to the production of the main fraction of the gross agricultural
ceptions and attitude factors on livelihood decisions. Household output value. The main cultivations are paddy, wheat, vegetables
decision making is influenced by a combination of internal factors and fruit. Among these, vegetables, paddy, and wheat represent the
of the household and external factors from the environment and most productive cultivations with respect to income generation. It
from the socio-economic context (Mattison and Norris, 2005; is a typical zone with a long history of rice-farming. Dianshan Lake,
Valbuena et al., 2010). Internal factors include personal percep- located in this area, is the most important drinking water source for
tions and attitudes towards making a certain decision (Yu et al., Shanghai. Located in the water source protection area of the
2013). For example, even rural households with the same socio- Huangpu River, this region implemented strict surface water
economic characteristics may have different perceptions and atti- quality standards, which led to strict constraints for large polluting
tudes toward their livelihoods, which may cause them to make industries, such as heavy industry, livestock and poultry farming. As
different decisions. However, few studies have examined the a pilot region for agricultural reform in China, agricultural pro-
empirical evidence of households' attitudes towards their liveli- duction and operations in the Qingpu district involve a higher de-
hood decisions (Jongeneel et al., 2008; Meyfroidt, 2013). To close gree of industrialization and standardization. The phenomenon and
this gap, this study surveyed and analysed the household attitudes problem that appeared in the livelihood transition process will
toward multiple factors that influence off-farm employment and have important significance for similar areas that are beginning to
land transfer decisions. or are already experiencing livelihood transitions.
The objectives of this paper are (1) to identify and classify the
main livelihood strategies of rural households in the face of socio- 2.2. Policy and institutional context
economic transitions in eastern coastal China, (2) to survey and
analyse farmers' attitudes toward multiple factors that influence To better understand the process of rural livelihood transition in
livelihood decisions regarding off-farm employment and land Qingpu, we focused specific attention on China's socio-economic
transfers and (3) to explore continuous livelihood changes of the transition and the relevant policies and institutional context for
households and how long-term shifts in livelihood strategies the past two decades. Because China's market-oriented economic
Z. Liu, L. Liu / Journal of Rural Studies 43 (2016) 145e158 147
reforms were expedited at the end of 1992, the rapid development was fragmented into several plots. Additionally, the reallocation of
of the manufacturing and service sectors resulted in an increased land depended on demographic change and threatened the tenure
demand for cheap labour. Meanwhile, the development of modern security of rural landholders.
technology resulted in improvements in agricultural productivity, Facing the above-mentioned challenges, China began to build
creating a large amount of surplus labour. Hence, ruraleurban relevant systems and establish policies to promote the efficient use
migration became a significant feature of China's economic devel- of both land and labour, which were vital to China's industrializa-
opment beginning in the mid-1990s (Chang et al., 2011). However, tion, urbanization, and rural development. On the one hand, the
most of the migrations represented a temporary and individual central government put in place a series of measures to improve the
pattern due to China's unique labour and land systems. The comparative benefits of agriculture. For example, it abolished local
household registration system (HRS), which was established by the fees levied on rural households between 2002 and 2003 and
central government in 1951 and 1958, was initially established to embarked on the grain subsidy programme in 2004. On the other
prohibit rural labour migration. While this migration restriction has hand, the central government introduced a series of legal measures
been gradually relaxed, it still limits migrant labourers from to intensify land tenure security. Key among these were the 1998
enjoying the same institutional, economic, and social statuses as revision of the Land Management Law (Chen and Davis, 1998) and
local residents (Whalley and Zhang, 2007). The method adopted by the 2003 Rural Land Contracting Law (RLCL) (Deininger et al., 2014).
rural migrants to respond to this institutionalized discrimination is Over time, the land use rights have become closer in nature to
to keep the land of their original home as a safety net for when the private property rights (Mullan et al., 2011). While the ownership of
get old or in the event they lose their job. On the other hand, land land is officially in the hands of the rural collectives, the contracted
tenure arrangements characterized by small farm size and frequent farmlands can be autonomously used for agricultural production by
reallocation due to the egalitarian distribution principle, make it households to meet family needs, and the rights to use farmlands
risky to migrate for a long period because the migrants may lose can be transferred to other households for agricultural activities
their land in the next session of land reallocation (Yan et al., 2014). through rent, exchange or inheritance (Yu et al., 2013). In this study,
China has a distinct land tenure system. The household re- the term “contracted land” refers to land that is allocated to indi-
sponsibility system (HRS), which was adopted by China in the early vidual households from village cooperatives, and “transferred land”
1980s, replaced collective farming and separated land-use rights refers to land that has been rented to households. Land exchange
from land ownership for the first time (Dong, 1996; Hu, 1997; and inheritance are not included in this study as they do not involve
Watson, 1983). Through fixed-term contracts, village collectives, decisions that households make to change their livelihood strate-
known as the village-based governing body, officially own the land, gies. As the most economically prosperous region in China,
but individual households gain the rights to use it for their own Shanghai faced problems regarding labour and land much earlier
production activities (Yu et al., 2013). Initially, the land was than the rest of China, and thus, Shanghai was the nation's pioneer
distributed mainly according to household size, and the contract with respect to experimenting with institutional innovations. In
period was only 15 years. Because of egalitarian principles, each addition to the national institutional arrangements, from 2006,
household received several plots allocated based on soil fertility, Shanghai has pursued the moderate scale management policy to
irrigation conditions, location, etc. (Yan et al., 2014). Small, highly promote land transfers and the efficient use of farmland, which
fragmented parcels, and frequent adjustments thus became the focuses on the normalization of the form and content for trans-
salient characteristics of household farmland in China. The average ferring land and on the providing of cash subsidies to moderate
farm size of a Chinese household was approximately 0.5 ha that scale tenant farmers according to the acreage of land they rent.
148 Z. Liu, L. Liu / Journal of Rural Studies 43 (2016) 145e158
Table 1
List of factors included in the survey of household attitudes toward livelihood decision making.
production, i.e., labour and land. others, and transferring in farmland from others. A classification
tree was used to construct the typology (see Fig. 4). Off-farm
3.3.2. Data analysis employment was defined by whether households engaged in off-
As the factors that households consider important may not farm employment. Land transfer-out was defined by whether
actually influence their decision making, we used binary logistic households rented all of their contracted land to others, and land
regression models to determine the statistical relationship between transfer-in was defined by whether households rented farmland
household attitude scores and actual decisions. We extracted the from others. By investigating and backtracking the current and
factors with a statistically significant association to actual decision former decisions that households had made to engage in off-farm
making that were driving rural livelihood transitions. employment and land transfer, we obtained the time nodes for
Binary logistic regression models have been widely used for each household specific to when they made their relevant de-
situations where the dependent variable has a binary output as it is cisions. In this way, the footprint of changes relevant to each
an ideal model to analyse individual intentions, decision behav- household's livelihood strategies can be restored. The types of
iours, and influencing factors. In our study, the attitude scores were households are dynamic with respect to their livelihood strategy
used as independent variables, and the actual decisions were used changes. For example, if a balanced household transferred all its
as dependent variables, allowing for only two possibilities. When contracted and transferred land to others and still engaged in off-
Y ¼ 1, the household has engaged in off-farm employment or has farm employment in 2003, it transformed into an off-farm house-
chosen to transfer land, and when Y ¼ 0, the opposite is true. Given hold. The detailed descriptions of households of each livelihood
several independent variables, the probability that Y ¼ 1, written as strategy type is provided in Section 4.1, and the differentiation
P(Y ¼ 1), is given by the following equation: pathways for each household type are analysed in Section 4.3.
demonstrate greater productive vitality and aspirations of higher decision making in the study area are ranked in order of their
income. Meanwhile, they also exhibit a higher capacity for resource average attitude scores. The logistic results that relate the actual
allocation and capital accumulation. decisions to the attitude scores are also presented in Table 2. The
models of off-farm employment and land transfer-in and transfer-
4.1.3. Off-farm household (OF) out exhibit a good fit as the values of Nagelkerke's R2 and the ROC of
Households of this type allocate all of their labour forces to off- these models are relatively good, thus indicating that the attitude
farm employment and rent out all of their contracted farmland to scores represent significant relationships with these decisions.
others, thus, they no longer engaged in farming activities. There are Factors with significant coefficients (marked in bold in Table 2)
two types of off-farm employment, that which involves unskilled are primarily located at the top of the ranking list, which indicates
labour and that which requires specific skills and knowledge. The that most of the factors that households perceive as important also
relatively high job stability and income levels make the latter more play a role in actual livelihood decision making. The logistic results
capable of transforming workers into urban residents, while those indicate that two capital factors, Age and Education and two
involved in unskilled labour are more likely to return to agricultural mediating factors, Wage and CropPrice, significantly influence off-
production as they get older. Many households of this type are not farm employment decision making. The odds ratio of wage and
dependent on farmland, and they have been independent of agri- education are above 1, indicating that households that consider off-
cultural economics with the exception that their homesteads and farm employment opportunities, income, and education of the
registrations are still in the village. heads of households as important decision factors are more likely
to engage in off-farm employment. The odds ratio for Age and
4.1.4. Idle household (IDL) CropPrice (between 0 and 1) suggests the opposite effect.
Households of this type have rented out all of their contracted The land transfer-in decision exhibits a positive correlation with
farmland to others, while engaging in neither farm nor off-farm attitude scores with respect to Policy, Machinery, and AgriCoop
employment due to, for example, old age or disease. In general, factors. The land transfer-out decision exhibits a positive correla-
these households are characterized by old-age, lack of work and tion with attitude scores for LandRent and Wage factors. At the
poverty. The main source of their income is land rent, subsidies same time, this decision demonstrates a negative correlation with
from the government and/or old-age insurance. the attitude scores for Labour, indicating that households that
consider labour important to their decisions are less inclined to
4.1.5. Professional household (PRO) make a positive decision on land transfer-out.
Households of this type do not engage in off-farm employment.
They rent farmland from others to realize the appropriate scale of 4.3. Livelihood transitions
management and engage all of their labour forces in farming ac-
tivities. They are characterized by large scale farming and sole Based on the variations in livelihood strategy trends from 1993
agricultural income sources. to 2013, we analysed and explored the transition processes of each
Professional households are often called specialized households household type according to three specific periods. The results are
or family farms in China. They are characterized by better mana- presented in Fig. 5, Tables 3e5. Fig. 5 presents the changing trends
gerial capacity and investment foresight. They have divested from in numbers of households with respect to various livelihood
the traditional mode of agricultural production and transformed strategy types during each of the three periods, namely, 1993 to
their farms into market-oriented operations with high market ra- 1999, 1999 to 2005, and 2005 to 2013. Tables 3e5 displays the
tionality of production investment, technology adoption, and transferring quantity between various household types for the
product sales. Because they require a larger number of one-off three periods. For each period, the number at the end of each col-
deposits and investments when they transfer in a substantial umn indicates the number of households of each type at the
amount of farmland, there is a greater demand from the house- beginning year, and the numbers at the end of each line represent
holds for capital accumulation. As the main farming operators, the number of households of each type at the ending year.
professional households, which are currently supported by the
Shanghai government, have had a positive effect on agricultural 4.3.1. Off-farm employment-oriented households
development in China and will be the dominant force of modern Between 1993 and 1999, the number of households of this type,
agriculture. It is worth noting that a large portion of heads of which were often converted from conventional households, rapidly
households of this type have been or are village leaders. In general, increased from 198 to 235 (Fig. 5A, Table 3). Under the distinct land
they have more sophisticated agricultural techniques and are more tenure system, households risked losing their rights to farmland if
knowledgeable about the government's policies with respect to they permanently migrated, a loss that increased the risk of losing
agricultural support. basic living guarantees and future income (Mullan et al., 2011).
Meanwhile, the transaction cost of market-based land transfers was
4.1.6. Conventional household (CON) high due to the fragmentation of the land and the insecurity of
Households of this type do not engage in off-farm employment, property rights (Deininger et al., 2014). In these situations, the
and they do not rent farmland from others. However, they do retain instability of off-farm employment impeded land transfer-out ac-
all the features of conventional rural-households. In general, tivities for most of the households, having transformed many
restricted by the resource endowment of farmland, households of conventional households into off-farm employment-oriented ones.
this type have a lower income. Lacking access to gain off-farm in- At the beginning of the 1999 to 2005 period, the number of off-
come, they are highly dependent on farmland self-sufficiency, farm employment-oriented households remained stable as the off-
which typically results in poverty. At present, households of this farm employment of surplus labour forces reached equilibrium
type have little influence over agricultural production efficiency (Fig. 5A). During the latter part of this phase, however, a portion of
and output in the region. the off-farm employment-oriented households became off-farm
households, and this number began to stabilize (Fig. 5A, Table 3).
4.2. Decision-making factors During this period, as the extensive use of farm machinery signif-
icantly improved the agriculture productivity in Shanghai, certain
In Table 2, the factors considered important for livelihood requirements for farmland transfers were established. On the other
152 Z. Liu, L. Liu / Journal of Rural Studies 43 (2016) 145e158
Table 2
The average attitude scores on off-farm employment and land transfer, and the estimated coefficients of the logistic model relating household attitude scores and actual
decisions [exp (b) values in logistic model].
Variable Average score Exp (b) values in logistic model Variable Average score Exp (b) values in logistic
model
Transfer-in Transfer-out
hand, the 1998 revision of the Land Administration Law (LAL) and fee reform (TFR), which abolished local fees levied on rural
the 2003 Rural Land Contract Law (RLCL) improved the tenure se- households (Wang and Shen, 2014). In 2002 and 2003, the agri-
curity and transferability of rural lands (Deininger et al., 2014). cultural tax in Shanghai was gradually abolished, thus reducing the
Moreover, the 1998 revision of the LAL stipulated that (i) the village annual burden on peasants by 4.25 billion Yuan. In 2004, China
collective should compose written land contracts with individual embarked on the grain subsidy programme, which included direct
households and (ii) the duration of land use rights would extended food subsidies, direct agricultural material subsidies, selective seed
by another 30 years (Ma et al., 2015). The RLCL focused on the subsidies, and farm machinery purchase subsidies (Yi et al., 2015).
following three areas: (i) defining land rights as property rights The amount of grain subsidies given to farmers increased from 14.5
rather than just private contracts, (ii) prohibiting land reallocation billion Yuan in 2004 to 166.8 billion Yuan (Chen, 2013) in 2012.
within villages in response to demographic changes and limiting Implementing the grain subsidy programme improved farm in-
partial land readjustments with clear conditions, (iii) specifying the come. Meanwhile, widespread agricultural machinery significantly
exact conditions and modes under which farmers can transfer decreased labour force investment intensity with respect to
arable land (Ma et al., 2015). Under these conditions, households ploughing, sowing, and reaping, thereby inducing some households
whose off-farm employments were relatively stable and whose off- to expand their agricultural production scale. Surveys indicate that
farm income was relatively high rented out their contracted land. land conversions during this period were usually informal, were
However, most of the households were still unwilling to rent out often verbal, and were frequently executed with relatives.
their contracted land. One reason for this was because the Between 2005 and 2013, the number of households of this type
remaining labourers who were not absorbed by off-farm industries, first increased and then declined (Fig. 5B). During this period,
were distributed among the households, and thereby tightly bound balanced households were mainly transformed from conventional
to the contracted land. In addition, the relatively lower land rent households and off-farm employment-oriented households
during this phase did not inspire households to rent out their land. (Table 4). The results of the survey further indicate that at the
Moreover, the dependency on farmland caused some of the beginning of the phase, with the encouragement of a moderate
households to hesitate to rent out their land even if they had stable scale management policy, the number of balanced households
off-farm income and had the opportunity to move their families significantly increased. The moderate scale management policy has
into town. been pursued by the Shanghai government since 2006, and the
Between 2005 and 2013, off-farm employment-oriented related policy provisions focused on two areas, namely, (i)
households quickly diminished as they transformed into off-farm normalizing and regulating the form and the content of land
households (Fig. 5A, Table 3). transfers such that transfer contracts adhere to unified standards
and be intermediated by collectives and minimum standards of
4.3.2. Balanced households land rent be updated by the government on an annual basis; and (ii)
According to our surveys, between 1993 and 1999, few balanced providing cash subsidies to moderate scale tenant farmers ac-
households existed (Fig. 5B). cording to the acreage of land they rent. During the middle and final
However, between 1999 and 2005, the number of balanced periods of this phase, because households of this type combined
households began to slowly increase (Fig. 5B, Table 4). During this on- and off-farm employment as their sources of income, the
period, the abolition of the agricultural tax and the increase in grain dispersion of the labour force caused the majority of these house-
planting subsidies slightly improved household incomes. During holds to operate on a relatively smaller scale. However, smaller
2000 and 2003, the central government implemented the tax-for- scale production could not absorb the constantly rising rents, and
Z. Liu, L. Liu / Journal of Rural Studies 43 (2016) 145e158 153
Fig. 5. Differentiation trends of various types of households between 1993 and 2013.
Table 3 Table 5
Transition matrix of the different household types between 1993 and 1999. Transition matrix of the different household types between 2005 and 2013.
1999 2013
OFO BA OF IDL PRO CON Total OFO BA OF IDL PRO CON Total
Surveys indicate that these off-farm households were mainly market. Meanwhile, fragmentation and decentralization, caused by
transformed from off-farm employment-oriented households the principle of absolute equal distribution, limited contiguous
(Table 4). After 1999, farmlands retained as off-farm employment- planting on a large scale when households themselves transferred
oriented households gradually declined due to the widespread use farmland.
of agricultural machinery, the steady increase of agricultural pro- Between 1999 and 2005, there was still a minimal number of
ductivity and farmland rent, thus generating a number of off-farm professional households (Fig. 5F), and the surveys indicated that
households. households of this type had relatively small production scales
Between 2005 and 2013, the number of households of this type during this period.
increased rapidly and then stabilized (Fig. 5C). These households Between 2005 and 2013, the number of professional households
had been transformed from off-farm employment-oriented quickly increased and began to stabilize (Fig. 5F). The surveys
households (Table 5). The economies of scale and normalization indicated that households of this type were mainly transformed
brought by the regular circulation of farmlands gradually became from balanced and off-farm households and had relatively large
institutional and technological guarantee for land transfer. Mean- production scales during this period (Table 5). Following a short
while, the land rental income was even higher than the farming period of off-farm engagement, the households accumulated a
income itself, causing most of the off-farm employment-oriented certain amount of capital to sustain a larger number of one-off
households to rent out their farmlands, thus transforming them deposits and investments when they transferred a substantial
from on-farm households to off-farm households. amount of farmland. After the central government cancelled agri-
cultural taxes and began to implement a national policy of direct
4.3.4. Idle households subsidies for grains, the enthusiasm of farmers to grow grain
Between 1993 and 1999, households of this type were few mobilized. Meanwhile, in 2006, Shanghai began to establish sub-
(Fig. 5D), and between 1999 and 2005, the number of idle house- sidies for large-scale agricultural operations and the purchase of
holds only minimally increased and exhibited a fluctuating trend farm machinery. The increasing subsidies given to households
(Fig. 5D). whose cultivated farmlands reached a certain area created a
However, between 2005 and 2013, the number of idle house- distinct increase in the number of professional households. The
hold, which were mainly transformed from conventional house- surveys indicate that the attitudes of the village collectives
holds, increased rapidly (Fig. 5D) (Table 5). Surveys indicate that regarding land transfers and the development of intermediaries
under the massive increase in demand and in the rent payments for were important variables in farmland transfers.
farmlands, the households that regarded farming as negative
gradually disengaged from agricultural production. 5. Discussion
5.3. Livelihood transition stages Comparing related studies from different regions of China, it is
noted that the processes of rural livelihood transition have both
The continuously changing processes of livelihood strategies similarities and differences (Feng, 2008; Feng and Heerink, 2008;
have not been addressed in previous studies (Mushongah and Gao et al., 2012; Yan et al., 2014). The two main phenomena
Scoones, 2012). Thus, we have conducted a more thorough anal- emerge during the process of rural livelihood transition in the
ysis of livelihood transitions. Combining the characteristics of Qingpu district, the movement of labour from agriculture and the
livelihood transition of each household type, we conclude that the development of the land transfer market, all of which, though
trajectory of rural household livelihood transitions has progressed universal in China, display various development situations in
through three stages from 1993 to 2013, specifically, the initial different regions (Huang et al., 2012; Jin and Deininger, 2009; Van
stage, the household self-organizing stage, and the government-led den Berg et al., 2007). As China's land transfer market was in an
stage. emerging phase (Tian and Li, 2014), the appearance of land rental
The period 1993 to 1999 constituted the initial stage of the markets was not conspicuous until the late 1990s. In the late 1980s
livelihood transition. The establishment of a market economic and early 1990s, few farmers engaged in rental activities (Brandt
system and the rapid development of township enterprises et al., 2004; Deininger and Jin, 2005). After the promotion of the
prompted a large number of rural surplus labourers to move into RLCL, however, land rental activities began to expand(Yan et al.,
non-agricultural industries. Although there was a legal basis for 2014). The problems appeared in the rural development of
farmland transfers, the demand for farmland was depressed Qingpu. For example, the low frequency of farmland transfers,
because of the low comparative gains of agricultural production, which was out of sync with the high frequency of household off-
thereby resulting in a low rate land transfers. At this stage, while farm employment, and the individual and temporary migration
many off-farm employment-oriented households appeared, there strategies, which hampered the rural allocative efficiency and the
were few balanced and professional households. The off-farm rate of urbanization in China, that most of the off-farm employ-
employment of rural labourers and the process of household off- ment-oriented households were taking, were also observed and
farm transformation was not synchronous. With the differentia- explored in other studies on China's rural development.
tion of conventional households into off-farm employment-ori- The similarities are due to the relatively coincident context of
ented households as the main characteristic, this was the initial China's policy and institutional arrangements and its socio-
stage of the livelihood transition. economic development environment as well as the differentia-
The period from 1999 to 2005 was the self-organizing stage of tion, which can be explained by regional distinctions, such as the
the livelihood transition. The labour productivity of households level of economic development, the natural resource conditions,
quickly improved under the application of agricultural machinery. the administrative abilities of local governments, and the local
In addition, the land administrative laws, which were modified in traditional culture. For example, even though Chinese authority has
1998, officially prescribed a land contracting system that would not implemented uniform land laws and policies, different regions have
change for 30 years. The policy of the stabilization of peasant land their own land institutions that have their own rules concerning
contract rights was legally binding, thus promoting an increased land distribution, adjustments, and transfers. There is also spatial
demand for land transfers. During this phase, land transfers with unevenness in the way in which land laws and policy reforms have
smaller scales and informal forms were spontaneous between been implemented (Feng and Heerink, 2008). In some of the more
households, and those households that rented in farmlands were economically developed provinces, such as Zhejiang, one-third of
mainly balanced ones. It is also noted that land rent was slowly all farm land is being rented (Kung, 2002). According to a nation-
increasing. For example, surveys indicate that the land rent was wide survey, Gao et al. (2012) found that, by 2008, 19% of the
approaching zero in 1999 but that it slowly increased over the next cultivated land was rented. However, most of the rental contracts
several years, albeit remaining at a low level. This stage was char- were verbal and informal and frequently involved relatives
acterized by the appearance of a small number of balanced and (Deininger et al., 2014; Gao et al., 2012).
professional households, while some of the off-farm employment- The rural livelihood transition in the Qingpu district, by contrast,
oriented households transformed into off-farm households that was in-depth and occurred quite rapidly. The percentage of the
tended toward stability around 2005. number of off-farm and professional households in 2013, according
The period from 2005 to 2013 was the government-led stage of to our survey, was relatively high (93%). While the relatively
the livelihood transition that was characterized be the trans- smooth transition from a rural livelihood is the result of several
formation of many off-farm employment-oriented households to factors, the policy aspects are the focus of this study. It is noted that
off-farm households and the tapering off of balanced households as the rural livelihood transition in Shanghai is closely related to the
the number of professional households quickly increased and highly developed economy of Shanghai, which has provided suffi-
tended towards stability. After 2006, using the methods of scaled cient opportunities for income, a factor that has drawn rural
operation subsidies, agricultural extension services and normali- labourers from the agricultural sector, while the topography of
zation of land transfers, the Shanghai government vigorously pur- Shanghai is well suited for the large-scale farming mechanization
sued the development of the moderately scaled operation of of professional households. However, the central and local gov-
agriculture, which resulted in the constant increase in land trans- ernments play a crucial role in doing away with inefficient insti-
fers, the expansion in the scale of production and the increase in tutional arrangements and in erecting policy arrangements that can
farmland rent. At the end of this stage, the ratio of land transfers improve the allocation efficiency of rural household livelihood as-
reached 93%, and the household differentiation and livelihood sets, thereby shaping the trajectory of rural livelihood transition.
transitions were tending toward stability. The professional house- The fact that, in this study, the transfers of rural labour to off-farm
holds gradually displaced the balanced households as the major jobs, which were active for at least a decade and which did not spur
agents of moderately scaled operations in agriculture such that the development of land markets, attest to this. During this transfer
there was the formation of the coexistent pattern of many off-farm period, land is trapped in the off-farm employment households
156 Z. Liu, L. Liu / Journal of Rural Studies 43 (2016) 145e158
because of the instability of off-farm employment, the insecurity of Shanghai Qingpu district allowed us to analyse the evolutionary
land tenure, the high transaction costs of rural land transfers and characteristics, developing trends and driving factors of the pro-
the low comparative benefits of agricultural production. cesses of rural household livelihood transitions between 1993 and
Policy and institutional arrangements with respect to the land 2013. The results indicated that the overall trend of the differenti-
and labour markets form a basis of the transfer of labour from the ation with respect to household livelihood was such that the pro-
agricultural sector to higher-paying, non-agricultural pursuits and portion of conventional households decreased and the proportion
from the market-based land transfers to more productive farmers of off-farm employment-oriented households and off-farm
then increase farm size and total earnings (Deininger et al., 2014). households alternately increased. The main proprietors of agricul-
China's policies addressing these problems can benefit other tural production transformed from scattered households, i.e., con-
developing countries as these countries make policy decisions ventional and off-farm employment-oriented households, to large-
regarding the security and transferability of rural land through law scale management households, i.e., professional and balanced
provisions and institutional arrangements, the support provided to households. This trend constituted the primary characteristics of
non-migrants as they adjust their agricultural land holdings, the rural household livelihood transitions during the process of fast
increase in the comparative gains for agricultural production industrialization combined with rapid urbanization.
through subsidizing agricultural land and the improvements of the Finally, rural livelihood transitions in Qingpu followed a stepped
rural infrastructure and living conditions of farmers. periodic characteristic that included an initial stage, a self-
organizing stage and a government-led stage. In the process of
6. Conclusions livelihood transition, the peasant self-organizing and government-
led mechanisms should act synergistically. Thus, the livelihood
Rural households in China are changing their livelihood strate- transitions under peasant self-organization would sometimes
gies by redeploying their livelihood assets, of which labour and encounter stagnation characterized by inefficiency and lack of vi-
land are among the most critical. The labour demand, which was tality. Therefore, to break through the obstacles in time, the gov-
triggered by the rapid development of non-agricultural sectors, ernment should be sensitive to the inefficient case and improve the
accompanied by the large surplus of labour in the agricultural policies and the institution. In the case of rural livelihood transition
sector and caused by the development of modern technology, in rural Qingpu, the key policy arrangements are grouped into two
resulted in a large-scale movement of labour from agriculture in the categories. One category is the policies to increase the security and
pursuit of higher income. The land left behind, which was small and transferability of rural land, and the other is the policies to raise the
fragmented and characterized by tenure insecurity, offered an comparative gains for agricultural production. As Shanghai is at the
extremely low comparative benefit, and was in a state of inefficient forefront of China's market reforms and economic developments,
use. This compelled the government to develop a series of policy the method and results of this study are expected to have some
arrangements designed to improve the allocative efficiency of the significance for similar studies, such as those in northern and
land. In response to the new opportunities presented by economic central China where similar processes of livelihood transitions are
development and institutional improvement, rural households are still in the early stages.
adjusting their livelihood strategies. The process of rural household
livelihood transition constitutes the epitome of local rural devel- Acknowledgements
opment during the past decades. Accordingly, to a large extent, the
nature and speed of this process are dependent on the policy and This research was supported by the National Natural Science
institutional environment. Examining the same households over Foundation of China (No. 41130526). The authors thank all of the
time allows a better understanding of the conditions that keep farmers who gave their time to be interviewed for this study. I offer
people in poverty as well as a more comprehensive perceptiona of many thanks to the anonymous reviewers who provided excellent
what enables these individuals to inform policy and improve their feedback to improve the quality of this manuscript.
situation (Kristjanson et al., 2010).
Using the sustainable livelihood framework, this paper adds to
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